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Hi guys! Long time lurker, and hobby modelist here. I have painted and built models for years, but never really got around to playing anything other than Pathfinder. A friend and I have decided to get into it, and after discussing it on a local level, we have decided to go with the newest edition of 40K. We ordered a couple copies of the core rule book, but.. Where do we go from there?

I am familiar with the lore surrounding the armies, to a certain extent, and know which I prefer on that basis. I am leaning towards getting into the Grey Knights and the tyranids. However, I am not finding a clear overview of what each armies tactics and game play styles are.

Could you guys give me a brief synopsis of how *EDIT* every army plays in the current edition, and possibly a rating list for how strong each army is? Thank you for any feedback!

Grey Knights focus on small, extremely potent units that pack one heck of a punch but are relatively fragile, simply due to low model count. (I mean, terminators are no slouch, but when you have twenty models in your whole army, you really feel every casualty.) They also offer excellent psychic defense and pretty good psychic offense, since pretty much everything in your army is going to get a 4+ Deny the Witch, minimum, and everything can throw out some form of mind bullet or another.
You're best off in close quarters, where you can bring your potent short-range firepower to bear, and where you can smash face in melee. You have access to a lot of great Melee weapons, and Hammerhand for +2 Strength on top of everything else.


Tyranids, meanwhile, suck.

(Okay, kidding, kidding. They're a horde army that use big, monstery lynchpins to keep everything from running off on autopilot. But they do kinda suck, and don't have many good, cohesive strategies.)

That was generally what I expected of the Grey Knights, and fits what I would use them for. I am surprised to find the nids suck, I had figured they would be viable by flanking, swarm attacks, something. They are obviously a "power in numbers" army, I am guessing the rules for them aren't well designed?

What of the other armies? Basic overviews?

Not all GK deny on 4+. All deny on 5+.

 themourningstar wrote:
They are obviously a "power in numbers" army, I am guessing the rules for them aren't well designed?

Pretty much from what I can tell.

What of the other armies? Basic overviews?

Craftworld Eldar - considered #1 army in power level. Have multiple strategies: A) Biel-Tan - specialist infantry that do well against one or maybe 2 types of units but range from meh to crappy if put in other situations; B) Saim Hann: Vehicle and jetbike spam, vehicles are considerred fragile, jetbikes are the best in the game; C) Ulthwe - semi-trained militia that are meh but need to be spammed and tons of high level psykers; D) Iyanden - tough, fearless constructs with lots of short range hyper-powerful guns. Generally, CWE are high mobility but pretty fragile (Iyanden is a notable exception as tough and slow) with short to medium range guns with a lot of hitting power.

Harlequins - the epitome of glass cannons that focus on melee and pistols. Supposed to be pretty win/lose. You get to melee and you win or else you evaporate in mid field. I would guess at mid-tier (people usually can name 1-4 for "upper" tier, then mid-tier, then low-tier, then the tier of crap).

Blood Angels - probably mid to lower power level, they specialize in assault troops and vehicles but miss out on a lot of the "must take" standard space marine stuff like centurions and grav cannons (kimd of fixed recently but still have less access). Otherwise, tougher infantry that gets great ways to work around fear based stuff (but all marines get that).

Necrons - considered 3 or 4 for power level depending on who you ask. Durability the army. Generally slog across the table and kill whatever gets close to them. Strong, mid-range guns.

Here's a good resources https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/Tactics

It has basic gameplay stuff and further down you will find specific army summaries.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Not all GK deny on 4+. All deny on 5+.

Whoops, I was under the impression that they had Admantium Will.

Anyways, yeah, Tyranids just have poor rules and poor cohesion. They have to deploy in awkward bubbles thanks to how Synapse works, making it less of an interesting ruleset and more of an annoying chore in measuring circles. They lack a lot of tools that they should have, and many of their choices are overcosted, forcing the 'Competitive' (By which I mean 'Not pathetic') lists to all fall into similar themes - Flyrants with two devourers are your only good AA choice, for example.


Orks are a better horde army, with choppy boyz to spare. They're great in close combat, point-for-point, but they lack good armor, (With zero access to invulns, save for a force field that only works against shooting attacks and a one-use special rule on their most expensive character,) and their shooting is strong but highly inaccurate, making them unreliable. Also, outside of the aforementioned expensive character, they have no way of building truly powerful Close Combat models, which is kind of ironic. A properly kitted Warboss is strong and well-costed, but there are no Ork equivalents to real beasty CC models that you find in other codexes.

Space Marines are a good rough-and-tumble army, with pretty good armor, pretty good range, a lot of decent options, and a ton of rules to choose from. They're a bit like an old pickup truck: They'll take a beating, they're reliable, and they may not pull out too many tricks, but at the end of the day the get the job done. Or you can take Iron Hands for crazy FNP shenanigans, or you can take White Scars for crazy-good biker lists.

Space Wolves are like Space Marines, except that they lack a lot of the options mentioned above, are more focused on Melee and short-range combat, and they have a wolf theme. Wulfen are great, Thunderwolf Cavalry are great, but if you try and play them like Space Marines you'll get your teeth knocked in.

Sisters of Battle are like Space Marines, but slightly cheaper and a whole lot worse. They get a few nifty specials rules and across-the-board 6++ Invulns, but with T3 and only a handful of choices to take (Most of whom are nearly identical, save for the one-use-per-game special rule they get,) they are an army for masochists and fluffy players.

Inquisition are not an army. Yes, they have a codex, but they aren't an army. They're a single model and a pretty-good-but-not-great squad that you add to other armies to make those other armies better.

I can give an overview for my main 3 armies:

Dark Angels: They are very much like regular Space Marines, except they lack some of the cool toys (although they do get a few toys of their own). Their best units by far are the Ravenwing, as they are very mobile and pretty durable as well thanks to the ability to reroll their jink saves. They have multiple competitive list builds, but many of them require allies. They have two main good builds without allies: a Ravenwing Strike Force that favors fast strikes against key targets, and the Lion's Blade Battle Company, which is basically a way to run a horde of Marines with free transports and control the board through large numbers of ObSec units.

Khorne Daemonkin: A heavily assault-based army, KDK is designed to move up the board and get into close combat as soon as possible. Their Blood Tithe mechanic allows them to get army-wide buffs like Feel No Pain or +1 attack, or even summon additional units. They are not an easy army to win with in this edition, as CC-focused armies in general struggle against the more shooting-oriented armies (like Tau or Eldar). Many Daemonkin lists tend to run multiple small units in order to maximize Blood Tithe.

Tau Empire: These guys are known for putting out a ton of shooting, but having next to no ability at all in CC. They also are very maneuverable, as most of their battlesuits can move up, shoot something, then duck back out of sight during the Assault phase thanks to being Jet Pack units. They also usually have markerlights to buff their shooting (by increasing Ballistic Skill or removing cover saves). Most of their weapons are quite strong as well. There are a variety of ways to run Tau competitively, as they have plenty of strong formations and detachments to choose from.

Necrons are brawlers, they don't have many tricks but what the do have is the toughest chin out of all of 40k. They can comfortably take fire that would cripple other armies, while marching inexorably forward thanks to rules like relentless and move through cover. On offense they are one of the few armies left to combine shooting with CC, most armies are good at one or the other, a few are good at both, but almost no one outside of the necrons can be good at both in a single list. In play necrons are like the cold grip of death slowly closing on your opponent while the flail useless at you.

You'll have layers of defenses that enable you to take the fight to the enemy, your range is short, 24" by enlarge, so the first turn is usually spent closing in. Once you are comfortably in range your CC units will get going, Lychguard, Triarch Praetorians, and the infamous wraiths all do great work in CC as well as being fast and tough. Meanwhile your gunline moves towards rapid fire range, and nothing is safe, between the sheer volume of shots you can put out, and the Gauss special rules you'll melt squad and vehicle alike. Every part of your army is dangerous, from the humble warriors who can rapid fire and steal the charge from any assault units that get to close, to your HQ which is just this side of of a MC with Toughness of 5 hitting with s7 ap 2 armor bane attacks.

Imperial Gua. . . sorry, Astra Militarum are a shooty faction like the Tau Empire, difference being that they have few ways to improve their army's gunnery in game. While Tau are an army known for high quality guns, the AM are the faction that personifies Stalin's quote that, 'quantity has a quality all its own.' Playing this army means that you are going to have a literal horde of scoring bodies but any heavy hitting generalists are likely going to be allied in from elsewhere in the IOM, Guard are one of the few armies where you can lose entire squads each turn and still win on objectives.

Skitarii and Cult Mechanics (effectively the same faction) are a shootier army with specialist elite melee units in various forms. Their base troops pack a significant punch, but lack transports (and aircraft) to get them where they need to go and don't have the best armor. They're somewhat reliant on special rules to get things done. If played properly, they have some formations that are top tier *cough*War Convocation*cough* but all-around just a solidly powerful faction.

It is possible to play these separately, but imo most people tend to mix them and they play along similar themes.

Edit: just wanted to add that they're probably my favorite faction to have on the tabletop after switching off of being a long-time Eldar fanboy.

Dark Eldar- Can still hit really hard given the opportunity and pretty fast but are very fragile and really dependent on target priority and positioning. Plenty of people consider them to be the weakest faction but most of those don't actually play Dark Eldar so wouldn't really know, they have some destinctly garbage units but some pretty good ones as well.

HuskyWarhammer wrote:
Edit: just wanted to add that they're probably my favorite faction to have on the tabletop after switching off of being a long-time Eldar fanboy.

Traitor

Imperial Knights - the army of giant stompey mechs, IK are generally considered Mid-tier because a number of armies just cannot deal with more than 1 or 2 of them. A full army maybe has half a dozen models at most, although each models is giant and is great against a lot of things. If you do not include FW models, they might have problems against hordes, maybe, but not really considering most hordes probably are not strong enough to hurt them.

Eldar Corsairs - a FW only army for the most part, Corsairs are very similar to CWE but have much more variety in their equipment. They are incredibly fast and have a fair number of shenanigans to make them faster but are generally fragile, lacking many of the super-tough and super-powerful units that CWE have. Probably mid-tier, but since not a lot of people play them straight-up, their power level is probably very debatable.

I absolutely love the Imperial Knight models. Can they be combined with other Imperial armies- say, tag along with my Grey Knights? I thought allied units could go together, but it seems I may have been wrong about that.

 themourningstar wrote:
I absolutely love the Imperial Knight models. Can they be combined with other Imperial armies- say, tag along with my Grey Knights? I thought allied units could go together, but it seems I may have been wrong about that.

This is very easy to do; knights have a formation that consists of a single knight that's pretty much custom made so you can ally it with a friendly human faction, like GK.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Not all GK deny on 4+. All deny on 5+.

Whoops, I was under the impression that they had Admantium Will.

If one of them has a stave then they get Adamantium Will. Also they can reroll 1s when denying due to their "The Aegis" rule. Sadly this doesn't help most of the time due to all the good stuff being Blessings.

 themourningstar wrote:
I absolutely love the Imperial Knight models. Can they be combined with other Imperial armies- say, tag along with my Grey Knights? I thought allied units could go together, but it seems I may have been wrong about that.

If you try hard enough and you can ally anything with anything else (Want to play Eldar allied with Slaanesh Daemons? Go right ahead )
Basically everything Imperium of Man is battle brothers with each other (highest level of allies) so its easy to create an army using multiple sources. The BRB has a section of allies and detachments which explains how they interact.

As to the original post....... every faction plays differently to an extend but there are also a lot of playstyles within the same codex so a lot of the armies aren't easy to summarize clearly without really digging into the nuances between them. Ill describe the armies I play since its what im more familiar with as a player.

Orks: On paper Orks are a horde army who use numbers to make up for lack of durability and tend to prefer melee combat over shooting. In practice they use large numbers and volume of dice to make up for the lack of "kill everything" weapons outside of their Power Klaws. Generally they require high skill because shooty things outshoot them while choppy things tend to out punch them. Mobility, hitting the right targets at the right time, and picking the right times to fight and the right times to avoid nasty threats is critical. Its a Hard Mode Army.

Tau: Shoot all the things. If the answer isn't shooting then they don't want anything to do with it. They can have lots of infantry, vehicles, or big stompy suits but all of them are built to shoot and tend to die like crazy in close combat. Medium to low mobility army but tactically flexible and a strong focus on synergy and teamwork. Easy Mode army but it takes a lot of skill to know how to avoid getting swamped into unwanted close combat, knowing how to maneuver, and how to actually control objectives outside of "clear the board then grab objectives". Borrowing a video game term Tau are like a Pub Stomper army that can be overwhelming if you don't play optimally or have a weak matchup against them (poor Dark Eldar, Orks, Nids )

Space Wolves: An army that isn't afraid to get in close be it with their shooting or actually going into close combat. They lack the firepower of regular space marines but they are never chumps in close combat. Their actual melee units generally either drown you in dice (Blood/Skyclaws), hit like a brick gak house (Thunder Wolves), or do both (Wulfen). Shooting up is not the strong point of space wolves and they lack some of the tactical flexibility of regular space marines but they are just nasty to deal with up close. Medium Difficulty Army but there are some cheese builds that seem easy to play until you come across a good player who knows how to contain it.

Grey Knights: Highly elite psyker army that is expensive in points and generally focused on melee. Weak shooting overall and really it comes down to making the most out of Dreadknights. Hard Mode army because they lack cost effective durability, mobility, and shooting which means they need to get into close combat to really do damage. The one unit that has those three things is the Dreadknight. Somewhere between Hard mode and Medium due to their limited arsenal and lack of total models. Usually need an ally to fill holes in their arsenal (they lack any good ranged weapons for 3+ armor or high armor vehicles).

Militarum Tempestus: Deep Strike and Vehicle spam army that is fragile as glass. Zero melee capability as they cost close to Space Marine prices but hit like a regular human. They require balls of steel to play and rely on a bit of luck to pull off some danger close deep strikes. Playing a 1500+ point army of purely MT is Hard Mode for sure and casualties will be high. They work better as an ally to other Imperium of Man armies.

Inquisition: They are an ally army 99% of the time. Lots of crazy junk they pull out but ultimately they are a utility/gimmick faction more than a core army. HARD Mode solo but make a great support for other armies (like GKs and MT )

Dude go with chaos they are not the best cidex, but with forgeworld and deamon allies they rock, seriously hard, and its so satisfying to stomp your enemies into the dirt with hard worked list and care ful tactics and not a ready auto win list. And you can legitely take black legion and not be as vanilla as the Ultra Smurf! ehm! cough! cough! Ultramarines.

Thank you very much for all the feedback guys, this was the exact info I needed. I do have one question though...

What army is 'best' at range? I despise both the lore and the model design for the Tau, and Im really hoping they arent it. The tactics involved with an army like that could lead to a very fun play style, but not at the expense of everything else.

 themourningstar wrote:
Thank you very much for all the feedback guys, this was the exact info I needed. I do have one question though...

What army is 'best' at range? I despise both the lore and the model design for the Tau, and Im really hoping they arent it. The tactics involved with an army like that could lead to a very fun play style, but not at the expense of everything else.

Astra Militarum. hands down.
the deathstrike missile launcher has infinite range on a heavy support chassis. there is also the infinite range Master of Ordnance who is an attachment for your Company Command Squad HQs. slightly lower is the basilisk battery with a 20' range that I have never seen used to its fullest. Then there is the Leman Russ with its 6' Battle Cannon. Beyond that, you are going into the realm of normal weapons that the rest of the Imperium has access to.

The armies I'm familiar with through playing as them decently extensively:

Tyranids: Can be played either as a bunch of grizzlies supported by not-so-benevolent overlords or as what is termed "Nidzilla", and everything in between. Almost all builds are some variety of middle-tier (6 or 7 out of 10 in terms of competitiveness). They have a single competitive build with a few twists, which basically consists of having a bunch (4 or 5) flyrants supported by multiple small units and cheap Monstrous creatures to add to the ground presence. This build is 8 or 9 out of 10 in terms of competitiveness because it counters the current flyer-light meta, but isn't fun to play against if you have a casual list (generally nothing that is 9+ in terms of competitiveness is fun to play against if you have a bad army, but that's part of the social contract - playing with models and units that won't totally smash your opponent)

Necrons: Generally just don't die. Can be played a variety of ways. One of the stronger and easier books to make an army from, and aren't too overbearing unless you try to be. If you go for all-out durability, you can be out-scored because you lack the ability to keep objectives away from the enemy and generally aren't as mobile or as good at long range shooting. Also are bad at combat for the most part. 7 or 8 in terms of competitiveness, with the better builds a solid 9. Can be frustrating to play against if you don't know how to play to get objectives and only want to table your opponent. They are space robots.

Eldar: A bunch of glass cannons mostly, but they are good cannons and are very shifty. Most units are not difficult to play well, like the Necrons. You can mostly just take units and be decently competitive. As with the Necrons, if you try to make a nasty list, you certainly can. Don't take more than 1 wraith knight. They can win a firefight against a lot of armies and their overall mobility is second to none (or one). Can be built on a lot of psychic buffs if you want, as they are very good at that. 8 out of 10 competitiveness, 10 out of 10 if you try to build a very good list.

Grey Knights: Very elite army, certainly more difficult to play due to the importance of each decision and the tactical implications of your positioning. One would think that terminators are pretty durable but the reality is that there are a decent amount of weapons that ignore their good armor save. They certainly can be good - you just have to learn your army well and play carefully. Fluff-wise, they are one of my favorite armies. You can play them in so many ways but they are all typically the same amount of competitive (7 or so). If you want to build some psychic deathstars with them, they probably do that better than anyone else (if you ally a few normal space marines with them). They won't win a grand tournament of 256 people any time soon, but anything other than that you are totally equipped for if you build them right. Dreadknights OP.

Space Marines: So many varieties, much like Necrons and Eldar. They tend to build a ton of multiple small units and are amazing at holding objectives, but not so much at killing things. You can use their psykers to ally with many other armies (Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, etc) to create super-units that are a ton of points but also kill a ton of things. Basically you have a lot of options, definitely 8 in terms of overall competitiveness, can be built to 9.5 if you are playing missions that aren't kill points (where you win by how many units you destroy).

Tau: Guns guns and more guns. That is what they do and they do it well. Overwhelming firepower. No psykers, no assault capability. They don't die in assault quite as fast as Necrons and aren't as durable (though they are more durable than Eldar) but they shoot better than any army in the game, and have easy access to things that can boost their accuracy and ignore cover saves with ease. If you like guns and how these models look, look no further. 8 in terms of overall competitiveness, 9 if you build them competitively. It's not a mean list unless you bring a bunch of battle suits that are riptide-sized or larger. Example - my tournament list has 3 riptides and 2 storm surges. Don't do this to make friends.

Genestealer Cult: An interesting army that dies if you fart in their general direction. They don't know what armor is. 5+ save for the win! But this army is the only army that is arguably more mobile than Eldar - popping up wherever they want and getting into assault right away if they roll well! (This is very strange and unusual). I think that they are 7 in terms of overall competitiveness but can be 8 or 9 if you build them right. Some armies will roll over even their best builds, but some armies will struggle to deal with some of their worst builds. One of the most matchup-dependent armies I've ever seen. Also one of the most amazing and fluffy armies. If you like Tyranids because of the gene stealers, this is your army. Full stop. They are also one of the better assault armies in the game. Full stop.

Daemons: An interesting army that on paper looks pretty lackluster but with psychic buffs and proper army construction can be monstrous and difficult to deal with for even the most savvy veteran. Conversely, are one of the most difficult armies to play well, even for the most savvy veteran. Any army will reward you for playing a lot of games and learning the army better, but this army I would say has the highest skill ceiling out of all of them. Can be played as an assault army, but will live or die by the psychic powers as their shooting is mostly underwhelming. Their durability is rather high on average, but their real strength comes with the ability to adapt with a wide variety of play strategies afforded by psychic powers even with the same army list. Average construction with no thought to synergy will be only a 6 out of 10 in competitiveness, but can be a 9.5 out of 10 if constructed competitively.

CSM: The red-headed step child of power armor marines. Got some love recently with a decent amount of formations so you can play them at an ok level of competitiveness (6 or 7) but you definitely need to consider what you're doing. If you try super hard (or ally with Daemons) you can have an army that is 8 or even 9 in terms of competitiveness, but at that point it's mostly just the Daemons doing all the heavy lifting and the space marines watching the action. Pure CSM I don't think can top 7 in terms of competitiveness. That being said, if you and your buddies don't need to win tournaments, you can still win games against even Eldar or Necrons. You just need to make sure that the game is decently fair before you start.

 Imateria wrote:
Dark Eldar- Can still hit really hard given the opportunity and pretty fast but are very fragile and really dependent on target priority and positioning. Plenty of people consider them to be the weakest faction but most of those don't actually play Dark Eldar so wouldn't really know, they have some destinctly garbage units but some pretty good ones as well.

As a DE player I find a large portion of my success is due to playing against opponents who have no clue what my army does. I get a lot of questions on what is that, what does it do, where is your HQ and so on. I also find the enemy often targets the wrong thing.

 themourningstar wrote:
Thank you very much for all the feedback guys, this was the exact info I needed. I do have one question though...

What army is 'best' at range? I despise both the lore and the model design for the Tau, and Im really hoping they arent it. The tactics involved with an army like that could lead to a very fun play style, but not at the expense of everything else.

Yeah... number one on overall is Tau. It's what they do.

IG is definately a contender for the #2 slot though. Trying to pick who is #2 is a bit harder because then the variations of shooting come into play and it really depends what type of shooting you want. IG definately has some of the best Artillery or Tank-Mounted Guns. Necrons have some badass shooting, although they have less range

 Red_Ink_Cat wrote:

 themourningstar wrote:
Thank you very much for all the feedback guys, this was the exact info I needed. I do have one question though...

What army is 'best' at range? I despise both the lore and the model design for the Tau, and Im really hoping they arent it. The tactics involved with an army like that could lead to a very fun play style, but not at the expense of everything else.

Yeah... number one on overall is Tau. It's what they do.

IG is definately a contender for the #2 slot though. Trying to pick who is #2 is a bit harder because then the variations of shooting come into play and it really depends what type of shooting you want. IG definately has some of the best Artillery or Tank-Mounted Guns. Necrons have some badass shooting, although they have less range

Yeah it varies. I think Eldar has the second strongest shooting just due to the fact that mobility is king and tanks really are not right now. IG has the best tanks for sure, and the best tank-mounted guns, but that's sort of like saying that they're the best player on a middle school basketball team.

Shooting is less fun in general. Unless it's ork shooting.